Friday, April 28, 2006

In 1998 Billy Squier released Happy Blue, a collection of eleven solo acoustic songs. While acoustic albums are not new, they rarely display a change in artistic direction as drastic as the one here. Happy Blue is heavily influenced by Billy Squier’s affection for the Blues. His presentation of the songs included on Happy Blue seems to have been done as a tribute to the art form as opposed to an attempt to co-opt the Blues into his own musical style. The only exception to that appears to be a slightly misguided attempt at an acoustic blues rendition of his 80’s hit The Stoke aptly titled, Stroke Me Blues.

Overall, the album itself is a very laidback affair with a lot of heart and, in my opinion, a respectable way to pass the time. Happy Blue also includes a cover of the Joni Mitchell classic, River and is capped off by a very interesting recording of his song Two. Give it a listen.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

If albums were people, 15 by Buckcherry would be the illegitimate love child spawned from the unholy union of Guns N’ Roses and The Black Crows. Did I mention that mom might have occasionally played slap and tickle with assorted members of the Rolling Stones just for kicks?

The first single from 15 is the over-the-top, creatively named, Crazy Bitch. As alluded to by the title, the lyrics in this song are touchingly poignant, not offensive in the least and perfectly suitable for small children. (editor’s note: the preceding statement may not, in fact, be factual) While lacking in subtlety, the song is definitely fun. It grooves and has a chorus that, while vulgar, I promise you will sing to yourself for days.

The newly reformed Buckcherry have released their third album, 15, following their self titled debut and their sophomore effort, Time Bomb. If your only points of musical reference for Buckcherry are the singles Lit Up and, the above mentioned, Crazy Bitch… you might be in for a bit of a surprise.

In listening to this album, my overall reaction for sometime was...confusion. Taking Crazy Bitch as a given, there are also songs like Sorry, a simple and seeming heartfelt ballad, that appears to be Crazy Bitch’s exact opposite. Further on in the course of the album, you have Broken Glass, that seems almost “punk” in it’s intensity followed by Back In The Day with it’s almost “pop” sensibility.

Don’t get me wrong, there are threads that tie 15 together. Josh Todd’s voice and Keith Nelson’s guitar work permeate this album, but with the addition of and Jimmy Ashhurst on bass, Stevie D. on guitar and Xavier Muriel on drums there’s a certain guitar sound and certain groove that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with a full on rock album. The guitars, for instance, have this really great warm sound that flows from song to song, with the only difference being that sometimes they’re turned up to the fabled “11”.

I really had to think about what this album was for quite a long time. It almost seemed to me that if you started 15 at a random song on the disc, you ended up with a different album all together by the time you were done. The more and more I listened though, I began to think that maybe that was the point all along.

There’s no denying that the guys in Buckcherry are Rockstars. You can hear it in their lyrics and feel it in the music. I also have no doubt that live, they could most likely separate your head from your body in short measure. However, as much as I want to hear Buckcherry turned loose so as to propagate their own special brand of chaos and destruction, I think that 15 is special specifically because they chose not to do that.

The differences from song to song and the changes in feel and tempo all help contribute to an album that is, in essence , different from all the other current rock albums that are being released. Since I used the guitars as an example before, I’ll finish up with them here. If you went with the same crispy, modern guitar sound that everybody else us, you would end up with the same album everyone else has…and this isn’t that album.

Elie Wiesel – Night: What a brilliantly terrifying book. Everyone should read this book so as to become familiar with the potential darkness of the human soul and to guard against the possibility of the nights Elie Wiesel spent in Auschwitz ever happening again.

Joshilyn Jackson – Gods in Alabama: How could you not dive right into a book that starts out, “There are Gods in Alabama. Jack Daniels, high school Quarterbacks, trucks, big tits and also…Jesus.” ? Good story with lots of twists and turns.---------- Well, I keep moving things around here and there on the site.

We’ve also been getting quite a few visits thanks to the guys in Fear the State who posted a link to their review on their myspace page @ www.myspace.com/fearthestate.

So, I’d like to say hi to anybody who found us from ProBoards or from Fear the State. Hope you like the site, and feel free to leave any comments you’d like in the comments section and on our message board.

Monday, April 24, 2006

I could take the easy way out and just say wait for the DVD…but I won’t.

Did you ever have one of those days that just seemed to keep going on and on…and on…forever? I had that experience yesterday watching Silent Hill…and I’m a fan of the game.

While being very faithful to the first Silent Hill video game, with a few noticeable exceptions, it just wasn’t the same. Actually, maybe it was exactly the same and that’s what the problem was. It was like paying someone ten dollars to watch them play the game, granted with better visuals and better sound…but still.

For diehard fans of the series, the locations are spot on as are the monsters, but I’d still wait for the DVD. Special features and fast-forward are what this movie really needs.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Picture this, it’s Friday night, you’re out at a bar and you hear the band start to play. You find yourself actually liking them, so you go over to the “merch” table and pickup their disc for the price of a couple of beers. You get it into the nearest CD player and you end up listening to something that doesn’t sound anything like what you just heard at the bar. The sound quality is bad, the mix is bad, the bass is too loud, the vocals aren’t loud enough.

Fear the State’s first full length release, Trust Nothing, is NOT one of those albums. This album can stand up to any major label release you’ve heard. I mean that in two ways...both musically and sonically.

From the opening notes of Get To You, the first track on Trust Nothing, you think you’re given a glimpse of what you’re going to hear, but looks can be deceiving. When you hear the heavy guitars and the pounding rhythm section, it would be very easy to think of this disc in terms of what you’ve heard before…but then you get to the chorus. The chorus, and eventually the bridge, has a certain melodic element that works almost as a counterpoint to the overt heaviness of the verses.

That characteristic is carried on through most of the songs on Trust Nothing. You’re presented with songs that end up being unique in that the parts that make up the songs play very well off themselves. You have shifts in melody, rhythm and intensity that help to make the songs breathe and stay interesting after several listens. I also found that the choruses on Trust Nothing stuck with me…for days at a time actually. I’d find myself at home or in the office replaying music in my head and then realizing that it had come from this album.

There are also songs like Chance to Change where you end up with something that, while still fitting into the album as a whole, takes you on an entirely different musical trip. In my opinion, it has a completely different feel than the other songs on Trust Nothing and is a real stand out.

To give you a very quick and very general idea of my take on the songs, the following is a track list with some quick notes I jotted down while listening:

Get To You: Cool melodies and I dig the change in the bridge.

Live Again: Great lyrics and a quick nod to Van Halen’s Panama in the solo section. Great Track.

Play This Card: Heavy, percussive verses that play well with the vocals.

World of Hate: Stylistically a bit different than the other tunes. Good chorus.

Stranger Things: Cool story in the lyrics. I dig the guitar parts and the melody. The vocals have this kind of Bowie thing going on in the verses. The more I listen to this track the more I like it.

So, that covers the songs on the disc, but how does it sound?

Sonically, Trust Nothing is by far one of the best sounding “Unsigned” albums I’ve heard. Everything is in its place. The album has a “fat” sound without being muddy, the highs are high and the lows are low.

One of the more interesting facts, though not that uncommon today, is that all of the production and engineering was done by vocalist and guitarist, Marc Amedola at his own studio, “The Audio Hotel Recording Studio” in West Haven, Connecticut. In visiting the studio’s website, www.audiohotel.com, it appears that several other bands have recorded there as well.

So…there you have it. A sonically strong, musically strong album from a band you may have never heard of…but you will.

Fear the State is:

Marc Amendola (Guitars and Vocals)

Jim Dizm (Drums)

Neal Nereo (Guitars)

Jeff Sobon (Bass)

Fear the State is from the New Haven area of Connecticut and played their first show on August 13, 2004 at the legendary Toads Place in New Haven. Trust Nothing was released February 24, 2006.

Vince Flynn – Consent to Kill: Best Mitch Rapp book in the series since the first one.

Javier Sierra – The Secret Supper: Saw an interview with him where he said that his findings were real. The Book is a novelization. The story is decent enough. Wonder how much is real?

Kate Mosse - The Labyrinth: Starts good then switches gears really suddenly. Once you figure out what’s going on, the story is really pretty good. It did seem kind of long though.----------Things have been starting to look a little different here at onthepod.net lately. I added a SiteBurner Site Feed that will give you an RSS feed. It’s really easy to get updates, just type in your email address where it says “Enter your email address to subscribe” on the right hand side of the page. Then when updates are made, you’ll get the feed. SiteBurner checks for updates once a day.

Opened up a store over at Café Press (www.cafepress.com/onthepod) and there’s a whole bunch of stuff with the nifty onthepod.net logo plastered all over it.I’ve already got my order in.

If I had to be stuck in a room listening to three people sing for an obscene amount of time, those three people would be Ruth Moody, Nicky Mehta and Annabelle Chvostek. They happen to be The Wailin’ Jennys from Winnipeg Canada…and damn, can they sing.

Two of the things that I really enjoy in life are female singers and A Prairie Home Companion. Garrison Keillor, the host of the afore mentioned A Prairie Home Companion, is probably one of the best living storytellers in the world today. He’s a great thinker, writer and speaker. He has one of those voices you can listen to for hours on end and just get lost in. As I said, he also happens to be the host of A Prairie Home Companion. It’s a two hour radio, show heard far and wide, on NPR every Saturday evening. There are always musical guests and it was on one of these shows that I first heard The Wailin’ Jennys perform.

From that first time I heard these three women sing together, I was hooked. I was so taken with the way that their voices fit together and the sound of their voices, both solo and combined, that I just wanted to hear more. I looked them up on the net and found their website http://www.thewailinjennys.com/ and then found their album 40 Days on iTunes.

40 Days was released in 2004 and is their most recent offering. If I only had three words to describe this album they would be pretty much perfect. There are a very few things that I’m not completely in love with on 40 Days and mostly it’s song selection. There are a couple of traditional tunes that end up on the album that puzzle me, but if you look at 40 Days as a folk album…I guess more traditional material has its place there.

That’s really it for my negatives. Everything else here is just golden. The song One Voice that leads off the album is my favorite. It starts out very simply with...you guessed it, one voice. It is soon joined by another and then finally a third to complete the harmony, which is fantastic. The Jennys voices are so clean that they just make the harmonies come to life. They also use that quality in a rather inspired cover of Neal Young’s, Old Man. Aside from singing Moody, Mehta, and Chvostek are gifted musicians playing guitar, dobro, harmonica, accordion, keyboards and bodhran (a traditional Celtic drum) between them.

The album itself is very well and minimally produced by David Travers-Smith. Another person who deserves credit for the success of 40 Days is Cara Luft who had been one of the original members of the The Wailin' Jennys until her departure in October of 2004. Her spot in the trio was filled by Annabelle Chvostek.

To me, the album breathes. The melodies and the harmonies get inside you as you listen to them and for a while they just take on a life of their own.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Rilo Kiley managed to snag a spot on the Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack with the song “Portions for Foxes.” After hearing them there I began a search for an album and eventually found More Adventurous.

One of the first things I noticed when listening to More Adventurous was the singer. I’m a sucker for the female voice and I wasn’t disappointed here. Jenny Lewis has a voice that is magical, even if at times you can hear shades of Jewel. But in the context of the songs on More Adventurous, her voice stands out in shining contrast to the darkness of the lyrics.

Yeah, I said the darkness of the lyrics…what about it. The lyrics to these songs are not entirely the happiest things I’ve ever listened to in my life. But they don’t have to be. She’s singing about things you wouldn’t normally associate with a very melodic, major key & “hooky” kind of song. I guess there’s a reason that most pop acts won’t touch things like death, war, cheating husbands and running into old lovers at funerals…but would you really want them to?

There is all this uniquely quirky instrumentation thrown into the songs on More Adventurous that just seems to fly at right angles to the lyrics. One of the best parts of that instrumentation is the guitar work by Blake Sennett. He manages to pull off some really intricate and tasty parts one minute and then the next, he throws in a really loose part that fits the song perfectly.

As far as I’m concerned, this album is worth a listen by anyone who’s looking for something a little different and a sure thing for anybody a little more daring.

So I’m listening to the new Gary Moore studio album, Old New Ballads Blues, and I’m thinking to myself that I must have no ever-lovin’ idea what the blues is. That’s pretty close to the actual truth I guess, I mean, I’m a white kid who grew up in a middle class home with both of his parents who never really had to work too hard for anything…relatively speaking.

I’m not terribly familiar with the original “bluesmen,” and with the exception of a B.B. King album or two, my blues has always been an approximation of the original. The blues I know came from people like Stevie Ray Vaughn and Eric Clapton…and Ralph Macchio in the movie Crossroads.

I have also heard a lot of people play something that kind of resembles the blues. They use the same chords and they use the same chord progressions as every blues player since the beginning of time. Most of the time, these are a bunch of rock guys that overindulge in the mood altering effects of Barley, Hops and Yeast mixed with water.

So I can hear you saying, “What does this have to do with Gary Moore?” Well, I’m glad you asked.

An ad for Gary Moore’s new album posted on his web site says that he is, “one of the finest blues guitarists of a generation.” While I’ll admit he is quite a guitarist and I certainly was very fond of his song “Still Got The Blues”…I feel the need to say that, in my humble opinion, Gary Moore is not a blues guitarist.

Don’t get me wrong, the boy can play. He plays and has been playing the blues for quite a while and the majority of the songs he has recorded here are blues tunes. But Gary Moore started out his career as a rocker and as much as he tries to be something different, he’s still a rocker at heart. You can hear it all over this album. He has this really killer guitar tone on all most all of the songs on this disc, but it’s just not a blues tone. It’s a full on, balls to the wall, rock and roll, lead guitar tone that should make you lock up your children and hide your small farm animals.

My opinion, with regard to the album as a whole is that it’s a decent listen as long as you’re not expecting to hear a blues album. I think the songs are good and the vocal performances captured here, while not stellar, are not too shabby. I also think that Gary Moore’s guitar playing is excellent, but that was never really in question. I guess what is in question, for me at least, is whether or not you can be “one of the finest blues guitarists of a generation” by just playing the blues?

Monday, April 10, 2006

After Appetite for Destruction “hit” you couldn’t turn around with out hearing Guns N’ Roses. They were everywhere. You either loved them or hated them, but they were everywhere. Their influence was palpable and their excess legendary. They delivered Lies and the Use Your Illusion albums and then seemingly imploded from the pressures of being Guns N’ Roses. Lawsuits, last minute canceled shows, crowd riots, Axl tantrums, no Izzy, no Slash, no Duff…then oblivion. You had solo albums from Izzy, Duff, Gilby, Matt & Slash’s Snakepit and then there was Velvet Revolver…but no Axl and no Guns N’ Roses. Rumors and greatest hits albums seemed to be all that was left of the once mighty band.

Well, it’s 2006 and the latest rumor is that the first Guns N’ Roses album in FIFTEEN years will be released this year. More lip service? Signs are pointing to no. Axl has publicly said that we will hear new Guns N’ Roses this year and there have been an increasing number of tracks leaked to the public via the internet. So what can we expect?

I managed to find three of these tracks online and wanted to share my opinions of them with you.

The first track is “Better.” This is the one song out of the three that really sounds different than the old Guns N’ Roses. It’s a very guitar laden track, but it’s a different kind of guitar than we’ve heard before. There are parts with a very heavy modern sound to them and others where there are almost progressive leads. You can tell that Axl was going for something more contemporary sounding when the song was written.

Track number two is “Catcher In The Rye.” This one sounds like it could have come off of one of the Use Your Illusion discs. It at times reminds me of parts of November Rain with that laid back heaviness that they managed to pull off so well. It’s definitely one of those songs you can picture Slash playing the lead on and it kind of suffers because of the comparison. It’s a pretty close approximation of how he would play though, but you get the impression that if Axl had been the only person responsible for Guns N’ Rose’s previous albums, this is what it would have sounded like. It’s not a bad tune by any stretch, but it sounds like an outtake from the Illusion sessions as opposed to something that took fifteen years to complete.

That leaves us with track number three, “There Was A Time.” If “Better” reflects a more modern version of Guns N’ Roses and “Catcher In The Rye” is a throwback to what came before, “There Was A Time” falls somewhere in between. The sound is another attempt to modernize what the Guns N’ Roses sound was, but it still has the grandiose aspirations of the Don’t Cry-November Rain-Estranged cycle from the Use Your Illusion Albums. It sounds heavy and dark which is great, but you still have the orchestral arrangements fading in under the radar that end up as a pretty big part of the overall track.

As far as vocals go, Axl Rose is in very good form. He’s still singing in his trademark voice and hitting his mark. He’s the thing that makes these songs Guns N’ Roses songs. By listening to these tracks you can tell just how much Axl Rose was responsible for with regard to the Guns N’ Roses “sound” that we are all familiar with. I say that, as much as I dislike the fact that it’s true, because Guns N’ Roses will always be the original lineup in my mind.

So…is this an Axl Rose solo album or a Guns N’ Roses album? Considering, he’s the only one of the original members still involved in recording music under the Guns N’ Roses name, I’d tend to lean towards a solo album. However, he does own the rights to the name and it’s not the first time that a band has continued with out all of the original members under the original name…Yes comes to mind as one instance.

So now you’ve heard about the songs. Either way you look at it, if these three songs are representative of the rest of whatever will end up being the fabled “Chinese Democracy” album, I think that Axl will have a monster on his hands. The songs are good, actually they’re really good…but fifteen years good? That I don’t know about.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

I don’t do a lot of the podcast thing, but there are a few that I listen to fairly regularly and this is one of them.

It’s hosted by Ed Robertson from Barenaked Ladies with guest appearances from the other band members and whoever else happens to be around at the time. The majority of the podcasting takes place at “Fresh Baked Woods,” a studio at BNL member Steven Page’s home in Canada. Ed has, on occasion, taken it upon himself to give updates from other locations including: his home, a van on the way to and from Banff, his bathroom and, most recently, from the Bahamas.

I find the BNL podcast fascinating. It covers what ever is going on that day in the recording process for their upcoming album, from recording tracks to who will mix the disc. It has also had some interesting discussions from the band on things like whether or not to release a double album and planning the BNL “Ships and Dip” cruise next year. On top of that, it’s funny.

There are also a couple of segments that have evolved over the course of the podcast. One of them is “This day in Barenaked Ladies History” where the guys talk about some of the more “colorful” moments that have taken place over the span of their career. The other is “What were you thinking when you wrote that song.” You guessed it, they talk about the inspiration for a song and generally play it live after the discussion, so for fans of the band…I think that would be worth the price of admission right there. The price, by the way, is free.

Generally, the podcasts themselves run anywhere between a short six minutes to the longest to date of nearly twenty two minutes. So far it’s always been amusing and entertaining and I personally hope that Ed will keep up the podcasting even when they are officially out of the studio.

For those of you out there who are the literate type and enjoy things like…words, A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore is one of, if not the funniest book I’ve ever read!!!

It’s a supernatural comedy about a man and death and their somewhat mutually exclusive relationship. It’s also about a kid who can’t keep a pet alive, two four hundred pound Hell Hounds, a lesbian sister who can’t keep her hands off of a good men’s suit, a morbidly preoccupied Goth chef named Lily, a paranoid ex-cop with a penchant for questionable Asian women, a green suit wearing African American record dealer who goes by the name “Minty Fresh” and the word kitty.

I think I might start talking about a couple of Podcasts that I listen to on a regular basis, so that could be kind of interesting...and free for you to listen to and I also have something special in the works for my first "Unsigned" review which I will hopefully be able to share with you soon.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

KT Tunstall can write. She has a knack for being able to convey her ideas lyrically and hit on a melody that can accomplish the same thing musically. She can invent really catchy hooks while still holding on to that “something” that prevents a song from becoming a bubblegum track.

Her voice, while holding shades of other female vocalists, is unique and easily handles everything she asks it to do. She has both a very sweet quality and a raspy growl that is not really ever out of place in her songs.

Lyrically, Eye To The Telescope is clever and expressive yet very approachable. Musically, it has a very cool acoustic vibe even when going electric. The production is really minimal, but everything sounds great.

For me, the album is very intimate and very much like I think it would be seeing her perform in a small club. It puts you right there, “watching” an artist create.

This is a very mellow album…not in a bad way, just very mellow. How To Save A Life is a vocal & piano driven disc without too many changes of pace. Basically it sets a mood and sticks to it and even the heavier tracks tend to follow along in that groove. Instrumentally, it’s pretty tight and the vocals are smooth. I didn’t really hear anything that stood out as a showcase but taken as a whole, it’s a pretty nice piece of work.

The Tribe Is One

About Me

I was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1972 which I believe puts me into the year of the Rat were I Chinese. I’m not, but even if I were I don’t know how I’d really feel about that. Let’s face it, the best thing about those place mats in Chinese restaurants is that someone has officially called my father a Cock and lived to tell about it. I, with great foresight on the part of my parents, was also born on May fifth or, as it’s commonly known to frat boys and my Mexican brothers and sisters, Cinco de Mayo. Little did I know as a child that I had the great fortune to share a birthday with the day the Mexican militia decided to whoop up on the French army in The Battle Of Puebla back in 1862 and not the Mexican Day of Independence…which certain tequila manufactures named Jose could care less if you knew about at all. The actual Mexican Day of Independence is September 16th. I kid you not, look it up if you don’t believe me.